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By: Robyn Chuter
If the religious instinct does not find its satiation in religious activity, it searches for what nourishment it can find elsewhere, in politics and business and education and, for that matter, within the confines of our private lives. Under such circumstances, everything becomes contaminated with unrecognized religious urgings and promptings and produces a zealotry whose intensity and danger is disproportionate to its putative cause. In consequence, it is now incumbent upon us all to engage in a most serious discussion about just what is Caesar’s and just what is God’s, understanding that some must be reserved for the latter, lest what is absolute and divine be attributed to the former.” Jordan B. Peterson All human societies studied thus far have (or have had) religions of some sort. According to primatologist Frans de Waals, “There are no exceptions to this.” The research of De Waals, along with that of sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists such as Robert Bellah, Robin Dunbah, Jonathan Turner and Émile Durkheim, strongly indicates that religion arose out of the burgeoning capacity for sociality in the hominin line that eventually gave rise to our species, Homo sapiens, and in turn served a social need – to bind individuals together, through shared beliefs, rituals and spiritual experiences, into a cohesive group that is capable of working together for the good of all: “Human solidarities are only possible by emotional arousal revolving around positive emotions – love, happiness, satisfaction, caring, loyalty – and the mitigation of the power of negative emotions, or at least some negative emotions. And once these new valences of positive emotions are neurologically possible, they can become entwined with rituals and other emotion-arousing behaviours to enhance solidarities and, eventually, produce notions of power gods and supernatural forces.” Jonathan Turner – cited in How and why did religion evolve? Westernised societies pride themselves on their secularism – that is, separating religious beliefs, practices and institutions from the process of public policy formation and implementation. This separation of church and state has been a tremendous boon for individual liberty, freeing individuals to make life choices congruent with their personal values. Share Thanks to secularism, Western societies no longer treat women and children as the chattels of their husbands and fathers, condemn homosexual people as deviants, or persecute people with nontraditional religious or spiritual beliefs (or none at all) as heretics. For these and other gifts of secularism, we can all be truly grateful. However, the law of unintended consequences is always operative, no matter how benign are the intentions of social reformers, and the secularisation movement is no exception to the rule. Capacity and need are inextricably related. The religious instinct is quite literally wired into our brains, and because we humans have the neurological and psychological capacity for experiencing complex emotions such as awe, devotion and self-sacrificial love, we also have the need to construct a framework of beliefs that helps us make sense of these deep-seated and spontaneously-arising feelings. Religious traditions provide us with just such an interpretative framework, but when we reject or lose them, something must step in to fill the void. And in secular Westernised societies, that “something” is increasingly scientism: “The promotion of science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values” or, in layperson’s terms, the elevation of science to stand as the only reliable source of knowledge and the best or only objective means by which we can all figure out how to live our lives. This deification of science is signalled by apparently unironic slogans such “I Believe in Science” – complete with religious iconography, as in this popular meme: … and in the increasingly widespread use of the definite article – as in “The Science” – to denote the canon of current scientific dogma, with all conflicting hypotheses and presentation of contradictory data condemned by self- or government-appointed scientific authorities (the new priesthood) as “unscientific information… misinformation or disinformation” (the new heresies). But as anyone who has studied science at even high school level knows, science is a method for discovering truth that is founded on radical scepticism, not belief. The mindset with which scientists approach their work is that we can never know anything with certainty. However, through the scientific method of observation of phenomena, formation of hypotheses about these phenomena, testing of the hypotheses through experiment, analysis of the data generated through experiment, and either rejection or refinement of the hypotheses on the basis of this analysis, in an endlessly iterative process, we can edge closer and closer to an accurate understanding of observed phenomena. Share Empowered! “Belief” has no place in the scientific method. The edict “follow the science” makes no sense because, as philosopher Matthew Crawford has cogently explained, “Science doesn’t lead anywhere. It can illuminate various courses of action, by quantifying the risks and specifying the tradeoffs. But it can’t make the necessary choices for us. By pretending otherwise, decision-makers can avoid taking responsibility for the choices they make on our behalf.” How science has been corrupted: The pandemic has revealed a darkly authoritarian side to expertise In other words, the scientific method is the best tool humans have ever invented for gathering and analysing information about our world. But it can’t tell us what to do with that information. For that, we need a moral framework, which was traditionally provided by religion. The deification of science as “The Science” and the elevation of its anointed practitioners to the new priestly caste, whose interpretations of “The Science’s” arcane utterances must never be questioned on pain of excommunication, is the very embodiment of the dangerous situation characterised by Jordan Peterson in the quote that opens this post. That is, Westernised populations, having largely abandoned traditional religious beliefs and practices, and having found or developed no appropriate alternative for the satisfaction of our religious instinct, have projected the longings engendered by this instinct onto the institution of science. And science, being wholly unsuitable for this purpose, has become “contaminated with unrecognized religious urgings and promptings… produc[ing] a zealotry whose intensity and danger is disproportionate to its putative cause.” This zealotry manifests, for example, in a “senior writer” for the Journal of the American Medical Association – whose qualification is an MA (Master of Arts) – thundering from her bully pulpit that doctors who even question the pronouncements of the CDC should be deregistered by their medical boards, and the Department of Homeland Security issuing a National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin which labels anyone who purveys what it describes as “false or misleading narratives” about COVID-19 as “domestic threat actors” – aka domestic terrorists. These calls for excommunication from the Church of Science for heresy, and fatwas against infidels, are the inevitable result of attempting to satisfy the religious instinct with an institution wholly unsuited to the task. The canonisation of St Anthony “I Am The Science” Fauci by the corporate press in the US has spawned great satire from the Babylon Bee: … but the Devotional Prayer Saint Candles are actually a real thing: (get yours today for just US$22.50 + p&h!). Give a gift subscription We’ve all seen the press conferences in which public health officials and politicians preach nonsense about “protecting yourself and others” with symbolic clothing items that do nothing to stop the transmission of viruses and injections that don’t prevent infection with, nor transmission of, SARS-CoV-2 (St Christopher’s medal, anyone?), whilst the acolytes in the press corps reverentially transcribe and promulgate their utterances as if they were the Sermon on the Mount. But increasingly we see even those who self-identify as religious imputing importance and credibility to scientists (or anointed representatives of The Science™) who make nonsensical pronouncements. For example, a team of psychologists presented meaningless but profound-sounding statements to over 10,000 individuals from 24 countries, attributing them to either a scientist or a spiritual guru, and found that all around the world, scientists’ claims are seen as more credible than those of spiritual gurus, even among the most religious subjects. The researchers used the New Age Bullshit Generator (which combines new age buzzwords in a syntactically correct structure, resulting in meaningless but pseudo-profound texts) to formulate two statements of nonsensical verbiage, referred to by the researchers as “gobbledegook”, although they noted parenthetically that it is “also referred to in the literature as ‘pseudo-profound bullshit’” – who knew there was a literature on such matters? – as follows:
And from Australia to Turkey, and China to the USA, the vast majority of participants were more likely to view nonsensical drivel as important and credible when it emanated from the mouth of a “scientist” than from a “spiritual guru”, although those who described themselves as religious found the spiritual guru’s words relatively more credible than the non-religious participants. Thank you for reading Empowered!. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share It is not at all reassuring that religious Australians appear to be some of the most gullible people in the world. Perhaps we could take some lessons in healthy scepticism from the practical, no-nonsense Dutch: Lead author of the study, University of Amsterdam psychologist Suzanne Hoogeveen, opined that “Our findings suggest that regardless of one’s worldview, science is seen worldwide as a powerful indicator of the reliability of information. In these times when there is a lot of talk about skepticism with regard to, for example, climate change and vaccinations, that is hopefully reassuring.” Scientists Carry Greater Credibility Than Spiritual Gurus Really, Ms Hoogeveen? That’s your conclusion – that we’re better off believing bullshit from scientists than bullshit from spiritual gurus? In what way is it “reassuring” that most people in the world rate arrant nonsense as “important” and “credible”, but only when intoned by a priest in the Church of Science? Bullshit is bullshit, no matter whose anointed lips it emanates from. What the public needs is training in bullshit detection, not habituation to accepting bullshit from “credible sources”. That training starts with an acknowledgement that while the scientific method is objective and values-neutral, scientists are not. They are human, and they bring to their work all of the human emotions that can cloud, distort and derail that work, including pride, envy, jealousy, fear (of social rejection, failure and ignominy), craving for honour and recognition, lust for power and control, and good old-fashioned greed. And, as Matthew Crawford explains, the image that non-scientists hold of scientists and science is a far cry from the way that science is actually conducted in the 21st century. Science is no longer an activity of “independent, self-motivated truth-seekers”; instead centralised funding and organisation has bureaucratised scientific activity, rendering it “fundamentally corporate” and “primarily organised around ‘knowledge monopolies’ that exclude dissident views”. Few scientists have the luxury of simply pursuing their interests, no matter where they lead; the vast majority are dependent on grant funding which is unavoidably political: “As a practical matter, ‘politicised science’ is the only kind there is (or rather, the only kind you are likely to hear about).” How science has been corrupted: The pandemic has revealed a darkly authoritarian side to expertise It is hardly surprising that certain individuals within the scientific community have personalities that render them highly susceptible to the allure of becoming the high priests of the new official state religion of scientism. Why would we ever think otherwise? There have always been individuals who wish to control and dominate others, and to marginalise and persecute those with different views. When science is delegated the responsibilities for meaning-making and norm-defining that were formerly undertaken by religion, scientists with authoritarian leanings will relish the opportunity to impose their worldview on dissenters – both within and outside the scientific community. And lest anyone labour under the delusion that a scientific dictatorship would be any less intolerant, brutal and repressive than a religious dictatorship, it bears remembering that the democidal regimes of Stalin and Mao were informed by scientistic rather than religious principles. Jordan Peterson invokes Jesus’ admonition to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” to remind us that if we do not find appropriate means of channelling our religious instinct, with its accompanying drives to engage in social cohesion-promoting rituals and costly behaviours such as altruism and even self-sacrifice, we will be driven toward entirely inappropriate means of expressing this instinct. Widespread continued adherence to the pointless and costly ritual of mask-wearing even when its most ardent evangelists have recanted their faith, and the willingness to submit one’s own children to a medical sacrament which offers them zero tangible benefits whilst incurring the risk of catastrophic harms, including death, are just two of the deeply worrying consequences of this misdirection of the religious instinct. “Belief in Science” has become a cult which endangers the mental and physical well-being of its adherents (not to mention their children), and threatens to rip apart the social fabric. In a very real sense, it threatens our humanity. Because when we render unto science what does not belong to science – the personal and societal responsibility for answering the deep, important questions about how to be good, how to raise our children, how to care for the sick and dying, how to grieve our lost loved ones, how to resolve our differences – dystopian insanities such as these are spawned: Science can provide us with data that can inform our thinking about these important questions, but it cannot answer them for us. Such questions can only be answered through deep, personal reflection and fearless, frank and open discussion with our fellow humans – in person, as humans have always done when confronting important issues. It is up to us, not The Science™, to grapple with those questions. Science can tell us about transmission dynamics and R nought values and how immunity develops after infection versus inoculation. But it cannot provide answers to the most urgent questions that secularised Western societies are currently asking: How do we order our social, economic, educational and medical priorities in the face of a respiratory virus that is highly contagious but starkly risk-stratifed by age and comorbidity status? Do we wish to live in a world of human values, where our children grow up seeing the expressions on their parents’, friends’ and teachers’ faces, and hug their Grandmas; where we hold the hands of our dying loved ones and mourn their loss together; and where we are free to make our own, fully informed decisions about the medical treatments we undergo? Or do we wish to become “transhuman” and live in the technocrat’s vision of paradise, where our physical, digital and biological identities are merged (via implantable microchips that can read our thoughts, as explained in Klaus Schwab’s book Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is unselfconsciously subtitled ‘A guide to building a better world’)… … and in which we gradually morph into cyborgs: “Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will not stop at becoming part of the physical world around us—they will become part of us.” Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: A guide to building a better world How do you want to live? This is the time for you to make a conscious choice, and once you have chosen, express that choice in your every action, and do not cede your right to choose to anyone, ever again. https://robynchuter.substack.com/ https://empowertotalhealth.com.au/
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By : Robyn Chuter
There have been many moments throughout the past two years of the manufactured COVID-19 crisis when I have wondered whether I fell asleep and woke up on the set of a remake of Idiocracy. However, I now believe that all previous episodes of this phenomenon were merely rehearsals for the event which I am about to relate to you. Grab the popcorn and settle in. Act 1: An Unbelievably Idiotic and Pointless Study is Designed and Conducted, at Taxpayers’ ExpenseIn late January, the Gold Coast Public Health Unit conducted two surveys of randomly-selected households (117 in the first survey, and 143 in the second) across the suburbs of this city of roughly 700 000 people – a city which, incidentally, has been my home for the past three years until I left it two weeks ago. Medical and nursing students from Bond, Griffith and Southern Cross universities assisted the Public Health Unit staff in doorknocking at homes whose addresses were randomly selected by a computer, and requesting residents to submit to PCR testing, supposedly to determine the prevalence of COVID-19 in the community. Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to the ongoing COVID clusterf*ck will be thinking, at this point, “Why on earth would the Public Health Unit be using a PCR test for this purpose?” Good question. I’m glad you asked. Let’s enumerate the reasons why no genuine public health expert who had two functioning brain cells left in their head would think that this study made any sense. 1. There is no justification for testing asymptomatic peopleOnly 4 of the 117 people tested in the first survey, and 6 of the 143 tested in the second survey, had any symptoms consistent with COVID-19. According to the Commonwealth Department of Health, people with no symptoms do not need to get tested: Testing for COVID-19In other words, the Gold Coast Public Health Unit blew approximately $20,000 up in smoke (based on QML’s price of $88 for a self-requested “COVID-19 PCR test” – note that this is a scientifically inaccurate description of the test, as one cannot perform a molecular test to detect a disease; the PCR test is intended to detect fragments of SARS-CoV-2, the virus associated with COVID-19). And that figure doesn’t include the salaries of the employees of the public health unit who spent their time undertaking this ridiculous exercise, at taxpayers’ expense. 2. A reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (commonly referred to as PCR) test is a completely unsuitable procedure for diagnosing an active infection with SARS-CoV-2As I have discussed in detail in a previous article, a positive PCR test result does not equate to infection. Viruses are intracellular pathogens (that is, they can only make us sick if they manage to get inside our cells and hijack our cellular machinery in order to make more copies of themselves) and hence detection of viral particles in bodily fluids – which are, by definition, found outside cells – such as those collected in the nasal and/or oral swabs used for the SARS-CoV-2 PCR test – does not mean that any symptoms the person has are caused by the virus detected: Respiratory Viral Infections (Chapter 3 of Tropical Infectious Diseases: Principles, Pathogens and Practice (Third Edition)3. The Gold Coast Public Health Unit did not specify the cycle threshold used in its PCR testingAgain, as explained in depth in a previous article, PCR is essentially a manufacturing technique for DNA. It allows researchers to take a tiny amount of genetic material and rapidly make millions or even billions of copies of it, in order to study it in detail. In the case of an RNA virus such as SARS-CoV-2, the RNA in the sample must first be converted into DNA, which is then put through repeated cycles of heating and cooling in order to amplify it. Each cycle roughly doubles the amount of viral genetic material present. The number of cycles that the sample will be put through in order to determine whether it is ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ for SARS-CoV-2 – the ‘cycle threshold’ – varies between different tests. A higher cycle threshold means that there are very few copies of viral RNA in the sample (and therefore, presumably, less likelihood of both clinical illness and capacity to infect others), while a lower cycle threshold means that the sample contained more copies of viral RNA. In an evaluation of one RT-PCR test currently being used in Australia, cycle thresholds of up to 40 were held to constitute a positive finding (i.e. presence of the virus) while cycle thresholds of 40-45 were considered to require further testing. However, researchers from Harvard University have pointed out that “Following complete resolution of symptoms, people can have prolonged positive SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test results, potentially for weeks… At these late time points, the Ct [cycle threshold] value is often very high, representing presence of very low copies of viral RNA… In these cases, where viral RNA copies in the sample may be fewer than 100, results are reported to the clinician simply as positive. This leaves the clinician with little choice but to interpret the results no differently than for a sample from someone who is floridly positive and where RNA copies routinely reach 100 million or more. A positive RT-qPCR result may not necessarily mean the person is still infectious or that they still have any meaningful disease. First, the RNA could be from nonviable or killed virus. Live virus is often isolable only during the first week of symptoms but not after day 8, even with positive RT-qPCR tests. Second, there may need to be a minimum amount of viable virus for onward transmission. For infection control purposes, the utility of the assay is greatest when identifying people who are floridly positive and at risk of further transmission.” To Interpret the SARS-CoV-2 Test, Consider the Cycle Threshold Value According to these researchers, patients with a cycle threshold of greater than 34 “likely do not have meaningful or transmissible disease.” To Interpret the SARS-CoV-2 Test, Consider the Cycle Threshold Value The godfather of the US COVID-19 response himself, Dr Anthony Fauci, stated that “if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more, the chances of it being replication-competent [i.e. capable of causing infection] are miniscule”: However, as stated above, a test with a cycle threshold of up to 40 is approved for use in “diagnosing COVID-19” in Australia. Remember, each cycle in the PCR process roughly doubles the amount of viral genetic material present, so the difference between 35 and 40 cycles is vast. Give a gift subscription Dr Kary Mullis, who was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the PCR technique, cogently explained why PCR is utterly unsuitable for diagnosing infections: Since the Gold Coast Public Health Unit did not specify the cycle threshold used for its PCR test, we can only assume that it followed the guidelines issued by the Doherty Institute, and considered anything up to 40 cycles to be a positive result. And that means that some, if not all, of the randomly sampled people proclaimed to have “tested positive for COVID” were in fact not infected with SARS-CoV-2 – in the sense of having actively replicating virus in their airways – and could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered to “have COVID-19”, or present a transmission risk to others. 4. The Gold Coast Public Health Unit failed to take positive predictive value into accountAgain, as previously explained, positive predictive value is the probability that following a positive test result, that individual will truly have that specific disease. Even when a test is extraordinarily sensitive (meaning it’s good at detecting the virus when it’s there i.e. not generating false negatives) and specific, meaning it’s good at ruling out the virus when it’s not there i.e. not generating false positives), the positive and negative predictive values of the test vary depending on the prevalence of the disease that’s being tested for in the population. As the prevalence of the disease declines in a population, the positive predictive value decreases, meaning there are more false positives for every true positive. As the Public Health Laboratory Network pointed out in June 2020: Public Health Laboratory Network Statement on Nucleic Acid Test False Positive Results for SARS-CoV-2 So the Gold Coast Public Health Unit randomly tested 260 people, 250 of whom had absolutely zero symptoms, and without any attempt to calculate the positive predictive value of the test, pronounced 31 of them to “have COVID”. Remember, 21 of these individuals had no symptoms of viral respiratory disease. How does one “have COVID” – which stands for COronaVirus Disease – when one has no symptoms of disease? By definition, if one has no symptoms, one does not “have COVID”. Furthermore, while stating that in the week between the first and second survey, “the rate of infection had halved”, they did not factor in the apparent reduced prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the community in order to produce a revised estimate of the positive predictive value of the test. They simply ignored this vitally important metric altogether. Thank you for reading Empowered!. This post is public so feel free to share it. In summary, the supposed “experts” at Gold Coast Public Health Unit squandered taxpayers’ money to deploy a test that is entirely inappropriate for detecting active infection, with an unspecified cycle threshold, on mostly asymptomatic people, without any attempt to calculate the positive predictive value of the test, and then concluded that their survey had identified many more people “with COVID” in the Gold Coast community than was commonly believed. Perhaps most egregiously, they recruited individuals who are studying to become doctors and nurses to assist with this blatantly fraudulent study, which contravened the Commonwealth Health Department’s advice on testing and ignored basic principles of epidemiology. Impressionable students have been groomed via this disgraceful exercise into believing that it’s perfectly acceptable to conduct studies that contravene all principles of ethical and evidence-based research design. Well done, Gold Coast Public Health Unit! Returning to the theme of Hanlon’s Razor which has preoccupied me for the past two weeks, are we to conclude that these “experts” are merely incompetent, or are they malicious? Surely any individual who has gained the qualifications to be employed in a public health unit could not be unaware that a PCR test is not fit for the purpose for which it was used in this survey. It seems to me that malice is a more likely explanation than incompetence. In either case, their employment should be terminated immediately as they are not fit to hold any publicly-funded position. Act 2: Politicians and Bureaucrats Seize on the Results to Push Their AgendaIn a joint press release issued by the Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, and Health Minister, Yvette D’Ath, Ms Palaszczuk concluded that the survey had demonstrated that: “Initial results indicate COVID-19 is considerably more common in the community than reported and that many people who are infectious may not be aware.” Survey reveals true prevalence of active COVID-19 cases on the Gold Coast Ms D’Ath echoed her fearless (or is that clueless?) leader, stating that: “As we know, the true number of cases in the community is likely to be much greater than what is reported to Queensland Health due to the number of cases confirmed through at-home testing.” Survey reveals true prevalence of active COVID-19 cases on the Gold Coast Again, anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 knows that these statements are arrant nonsense. As I have documented extensively here, here and here, as with other viral respiratory infections, SARS-CoV-2 infection is spread by people who have symptoms. A systematic review and meta-analysis of household transmission studies found that the risk of developing an infection due to presymptomatic transmission (shedding of infectious virus before one develops symptoms of respiratory infection) and asymptomatic transmission (shedding of infectious virus despite never developing symptoms of respiratory infection) combined was 0.7%. That is, seven in every 1000 individuals exposed to a person who had detectable SARS-CoV-2 in their respiratory mucosa, but had not yet or did not ever develop symptoms, will get infected with SARS-CoV-2 themselves. And this laughably low risk of transmission is almost entirely attributable to presymptomatic transmission: “The evidence that asymptomatic transmission exists at all is tissue thin.” Has the Evidence of Asymptomatic Spread of COVID-19 been Significantly Overstated? Likewise, the notion that a person with no symptoms of respiratory infection is a “case” of anything except scientific malfeasance is absurd. How would you judge the competency – and indeed, the sanity – of your doctor if s/he diagnosed you with the flu merely because your nasal swab contained particles of influenza virus, if you had no symptoms of respiratory illness and were in fact perfectly well? Yet this is the level of idiocy demonstrated by the minister charged with developing health policies in this state. So do the Premier and Health Minister of Queensland know that they are misrepresenting the results of this study as indicating that there’s a significant pool of “silent spreaders” of COVID, lurking in the suburbs of the Gold Coast? Given the complete scientific illiteracy of most politicians, it’s highly likely that they don’t have the faintest idea how ridiculous their fear-mongering is. That’s a vote on the incompetence side of the Hanlon’s Razor ledger. On the other hand, to have held high public office in Queensland for the past two years and remain ignorant of the key facts of SARS-CoV-2 transmission points to a concerted effort to remain ignorant, which is a vote on the malice side of the ledger. I don’t pretend to know whether the Premier and Health Minister are incompetent or malicious, but once again, either option disqualifies them from presiding over policy decisions that affect the lives of over 5.2 million people. The Chief Health Officer, Dr John Gerrard, drew the following conclusion from the Gold Coast survey : “This is a reminder that basic prevention measures such as vaccination, social distancing, hand hygiene and coming forward to get tested remain central to us getting through this phase of the pandemic.” Survey reveals true prevalence of active COVID-19 cases on the Gold Coast This statement is, again, arrant nonsense. There is precisely zero evidence that social distancing has had any impact whatsoever on preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and the US CDC states that “The risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection via the fomite transmission route [i.e. contact with surfaces on which an infected person has coughed or sneezed] is low, and generally less than 1 in 10,000, which means that each contact with a contaminated surface has less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of causing an infection.” Science Brief: SARS-CoV-2 and Surface (Fomite) Transmission for Indoor Community Environments For a doctor to not know that “social distancing” and “hand hygiene” have next to zero effect on the spread of a virus spread through aerosol transmission is simply unforgiveable. Is the man a fool, or is he malicious? Again, either choice disqualifies him from holding any kind of public health office. As for “vaccination”, none of the currently-available COVID-19 injections prevent either infection with or transmission of the currently-dominant Omicron strain of SARS-CoV-2. In fact, there is considerable evidence that they increase the risk of infection, rendering the Premier’s claim that “fully vaccinated and boosted Queenslanders… are benefiting from the protective effects of the vaccine” farcical. In summary, the politicians and bureaucrats who formulate and implement COVID-19 policies in Queensland are either ignorant of basic facts about the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 virus, the tests used to detect it, and the effect of the injections that they have mandated on large swaths of the population, or they know these facts and are lying about them. Incompetence or malice? Perhaps only a court of law will be able to decide. Share Empowered! Act 3: Ignorant and Scientifically Illiterate Journalists Amplify the MisrepresentationsAustralia’s publicly-funded broadcaster, the ABC, has made itself a complete laughing stock throughout the manufactured COVID crisis. And it continued its ignominious performance in its slavish stenography of the State government’s misrepresentation of the Gold Coast survey. Tobias Jurss-Lewis, generously described as “a news reporter with ABC Capricornia”, inanely summarised the survey as indicating that “Up to one in six residents have been living with COVID during the peak of the virus in the region.” Random COVID tests to be conducted after Gold Coast survey finds up to 90 per cent of positive cases don’t know they have it Remember, only ten out of the 260 people surveyed (i.e. less than 4%) had any symptoms of respiratory infection, which may or may not have been attributable to the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in their airways. The remaining 21 out of the total of 31 who tested positive had no symptoms whatsoever. They weren’t “living with COVID” – they were simply not sick and not infectious. Mr Jurss-Lewis was at pains to emphasise that “Most people in the study with mild or no symptoms were fully vaccinated.” Random COVID tests to be conducted after Gold Coast survey finds up to 90 per cent of positive cases don’t know they have it Given that all of the ten people who reported symptoms were at home minding their own business when the Gold Coast Public Health Unit knocked on their doors and asked to stick a swab up their noses, it’s pretty safe to assume that all of the purportedly infected had mild symptoms, regardless of their vaccination status. But stating that wouldn’t comport with the ABC’s rabidly pro-injection rhetoric, now would it? Two other ABC “journalists”, Jessica Rendall and “crime reporter” Paula Doneman also weighed in on the Gold Coast survey, regurgitating John Gerrard’s nonsensical statement that “There were people walking around the Gold Coast who had no idea that they had COVID-19.” Um, that’s because if a person has no symptoms of COVID-19 then THEY DON’T HAVE IT. Once again, are Mr Jurss-Lewis, Ms Rendall and Ms Doneman incompetent, or malicious? If they wish to cover a science-related beat, it is their responsibility as journalists to get themselves properly informed on what “COVID-19” is and is not, what PCR testing is, and what conclusions can and cannot be drawn from it. If they fail to do this, and if they do not challenge politicians and public health bureaucrats who spout unscientific nonsense, they are not fit to call themselves journalists, and might consider retraining to take dictation for the Premier or Chief Health Officer. Or perhaps they don’t need retraining to fill that role; they appear to be eminently qualified already. This entire debacle would be amusing if it wasn’t squandering gobs of taxpayers’ money, perverting the development of professional standards in nursing and medical students, and feeding into the fear-porn narrative that the public has been fire-hosed with for the past two years. You’ll forgive me for being angered rather than amused by the stupidity and/or malice of the public health personnel, politicians, bureaucrats and journalists who formed the cast of this three-act farce – all of them comfortably funded out of the public purse whilst the policies they formulate, enact and spruik decimate the livelihoods and constrain the human rights and fundamental freedoms of many fellow Queenslanders. We have been burdened, defrauded, infringed and imposed upon by these midwits and malfeasants for too long. The biosecurity theatre to which we have been subjected for the last two years has abjectly failed to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2 or reduce hospitalisations and deaths from COVID-19. Peaceful mass noncompliance with the petty tyrants and their litany of nonsensical demands is the only way out of this nightmare: And then, the people who have done this to us must be held to account. Those who were simply too stupid or incompetent to understand their errors can be forgiven if they sincerely apologise for the harms they inflicted. But those who knew that what they were doing was scientifically unjustified and ethically reprehensible, but did it anyway whether for personal advantage, professional advancement or social acceptance, deserve about as much mercy as they have shown. By - Robyn Chuter
In Part 1 of this mini-series, I summarised the data indicating that since the roll-out of the experimental medical interventions usually labelled “COVID-19 vaccines” began, the death rates from both COVID- and non-COVID-related causes have gone up, with the most dramatic increase in deaths occurring in younger adults. There are, of course, many potential explanations for this observed rise in deaths, including:
However, in Part 2, I’m going to present multiple pieces of evidence that the COVID-19 injections have played a significant, direct causal role in these increased death rates. Before I lay out those pieces of evidence, let’s talk about the Bradford Hill criteria, otherwise known as Hill’s Criteria for Causality. Sir Austin Bradford Hill proposed nine aspects of an association between two phenomena that should be considered in attempting to distinguish causal from noncausal associations:
1. The Pfizer/BioNTech clinical trial showed more deaths in the injection group than the placebo groupAs Peter Doshi, Associate Editor of The BMJ pointed out in October 2020, “None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths.” Will covid-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren’t designed to tell us You read that correctly. While politicians, health bureaucrats and media talking heads rapturously spruiked these novel products as “lifesaving vaccines” from the get-go, none of the phase 3 trials for COVID-19 injections were designed to ascertain whether these products reduced the frequency of the outcomes that the people who were eventually going to be seduced, cajoled and coerced into taking them actually cared about – severe disease, hospitalisation and death… and also viral spread: “Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.” Will covid-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren’t designed to tell us As Doshi explained, the manufacturers of COVID-19 injections, and the contract research organisations they hire to carry out the trials, hold all the data on these clinical trials, and none has released full datasets for independent evaluation. However, when Pfizer published its six-month safety and efficacy data in order to gain FDA approval for its Comirnaty injection, a rather startling fact emerged: More people who were randomised to receive the Pfizer injection died during the trial than people randomised to receive the saline placebo injection. Whilst 1 out of the 21,926 participants who received two Pfizer injections were recorded as dying of “COVID-19 pneumonia”, 2 out of the 21,921 participants who received two placebo injections were recorded as dying of “COVID-19”. Even this linguistic nit-picking in assigning cause of death raises suspicions; if two people died “of” COVID-19 without developing pneumonia, how exactly did COVID-19 cause their deaths? We can’t tell, because Pfizer hasn’t released the clinical data. But setting this aside, according to its own clinical trial, the Pfizer product reduced the risk of dying of COVID-19 from 0.009% to 0.004%. So that’s exciting. On the other hand, Pfizer reported 15 total deaths in those who received the “vaccine”, versus 14 deaths in those who received the placebo (see Table S4 in the Supplementary Materials): However, Pfizer told the FDA a rather different story. In its ‘Summary Basis for Regulatory Action’, FDA reported that in the same period in which Pfizer had publicly announced 15 deaths in the “vaccine” group and 14 deaths in the placebo group, “There were a total of 38 deaths, 21 in the COMIRNATY group and 17 in the placebo group.” Summary Basis for Regulatory Action Caveats apply to interpretation of these data, of course. The overall numbers of deaths were small, and the deaths that occurred in the injection recipients cannot be definitively linked to the injection itself. Nonetheless, the fact that the death rate was 24% higher in people who received the injection than the placebo, should give pause for thought, especially given the vanishingly small risk of dying of COVID-19 that the trial itself documented. Dying of COVID-19 isn’t better than dying of any other cause. Dead is dead. 2. A Big Data analysis of 145 countries indicates that COVID-19 injections have increased the number of people dying of COVID-19Bayesian analysis is a statistical technique that uses evidence to update the state of uncertainty over competing probability models. In laymen’s terms, it makes use of big gobs of data about Thing A and Thing B to get closer and closer to being sure that Thing A caused Thing B rather than merely being associated with it. Using data downloaded directly from Our World in Data and the software package CausalImpact, study author Kyle A. Beattie found that in 87% of the 103 countries for which statistically significant data were available, there was an increase in total cases of COVID-19 per million after injections were introduced. Furthermore, in 90% of the 128 countries for which statistically significant data were available, there was an increase in total deaths per million associated with COVID-19 after injections were introduced. In a nutshell: It is highly probable that the introduction of COVID-19 injections into a population leads to more cases and more deaths. And tragically, the countries with the lowest COVID-19 death toll pre-injection had the biggest increase in COVID-19 deaths after the injection roll-out began: “Countries with few COVID-19 deaths in the year 2020 appear to have fared the worst of all countries after vaccine administration (e.g Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, Taiwan, Seychelles, Cambodia, etc.). The causal impact results from vaccine administration seen in these countries of hundreds or thousands of percentage increases in total deaths and cases per million are also the causal impact results we can be most statistically confident in due to the direct increase of COVID-19 associated deaths and cases after vaccine administration, where prior to vaccine administration there were few or none.” Worldwide Bayesian Causal Impact Analysis of Vaccine Administration on Deaths and Cases Associated with COVID-19: A BigData Analysis of 145 Countries Fiji suffered an eye-popping 2499% increase in COVID-19 deaths per million after they began injecting their population, Seychelles a staggering 10,680% increase, and Mongolia an unfathomably tragic 19,015% increase. 3. COVID-19 cases and deaths spike after people receive their first injectionIf COVID-19 injections had no association with serious illness and death, we would not expect to see hospitalisations for, and deaths from, COVID-19 clustering tightly in the days and weeks following them. But that’s exactly what was seen in the Canadian province of Alberta… at least until investigative journalist Alex Berenson notified the public and the government took down the charts. Luckily, a previous version of the page was archived before the Canadian corruptocrats memory-holed it, so we can see what they wanted to hide. Cases after first injection: Hospitalisations after first injection: Deaths after first injection: Purple represents people aged over 75, blue 60-74, green 40-59, yellow 20-39, orange 12-19 and red under 12; it’s obvious that the injections are most deadly in the age group most vulnerable to COVID-19 – the elderly. As Berenson points out, the same phenomenon was observed in the UK, where the highest COVID-19 death toll per capita of any large country at any stage during the pandemic occurred in January 2021, as the Brits began jabbing their elderly people. The most likely explanation is the transient drop in lymphocyte counts that occurs after the first injection (lymphocytopoenia), which is known to increase the risk of infection in general. According to a Danish study of nursing home residents and health care workers who received the Pfizer shot, vaccine efficacy in the first 14 days after the first shot was -40% for the residents and -104% for the workers. That is, the old folk were 40% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 in the 14 days after their first shot than if they remained uninjected, and the health care workers were more than twice as likely. Low lymphocyte counts have also been found to correlate with greater severity of COVID-19 – a real double-whammy for those exposed to SARS-CoV-2 during a period in which their antiviral immune defence is reduced, and even more so if they’re immunocompromised due to immunosenescence (age-related decline in immune function) and/or pre-existing illness. Note that most jurisdictions, including Australia, count people as “unvaccinated” until they are 14 days past their first shot. No wonder – doing this allows them to bury the data on negative vaccine efficacy in the first 2 weeks as well as deflecting attention away from the possibility that people who have just received their first injection may be SARS-CoV-2 superspreaders because if they become infected whilst their immune system is suppressed, they will be more likely to have a high viral load and therefore to shed infectious virus. 4. All-cause and non-COVID mortality also rise after the first injectionAnalysis of week-by-week all-cause mortality data from Europe and Israel found that all-cause mortality spikes in the 5-6 weeks after the first injection, then falls in the 6-20 weeks following the first injection (correlating with the brief window of time in which there appears to be a protective effect against infection and hospitalisation for COVID-19), then begins to rise again in people aged 15-64. In the US, which has less granular data on mortality than Europe and Israel, the number of administered injection doses in both the prior month and current month predicted monthly total deaths in most age groups, with more excess deaths occurring in the elderly (over 75) in the first half of the year, and in younger people in the second half of the year – directly paralleling the age-stratified roll-out of the injections. Using a number of different models and thresholds, the authors estimated that somewhere between 133,382 and 187,402 vaccine-associated deaths occurred in the US from February to August of 2021. They calculated the average vaccine fatality rate (VFR) across the US as 0.04% (4 deaths per 10,000 doses administered), with age-adjusted VFRs of 0.004% for ages 0-17 years, 0.005% for 18-29 years, 0.009% for 30-39, 0.017% for 40-49, 0.016% for 50-64, 0.036% for 65-74, 0.06% for 75-84, and 0.055% for 85-plus. Intriguingly, both the European and US data revealed that mortality in children aged 0-14 (who were unvaccinated during the time period analysed) also rose in lockstep with weekly increases in percentages of the total population who received at least one injection, up until week 18 post injection, with the majority of child deaths occurring in babies under 1 year of age. The authors propose “indirect adverse effects of adult vaccination on mortality of children of ages 0-14 during the first 18 weeks after vaccination”. These indirect effects could include:
6. Reports of deaths following COVID-19 injections are higher than for any previous vaccinesAs previously described, reports of deaths following COVID-19 injections to national and international pharmacovigilance systems – including DAEN in Australia, VAERS in the US, EUdraVigilance in Europe and the Yellow Card system in the UK – are dramatically higher than for any previous vaccine. For example, the average number of deaths following vaccination reported to VAERS for the past 10 years has been about 155 each year, for all vaccines combined. As of January 20, 2022, 21,745 deaths after COVID-19 injections have been reported to VAERS, since the roll-out began in late December 2020. That’s roughly 140 times as many deaths reported after COVID-19 injections as after all the other vaccines put together. And, also as previously described, most adverse reactions to vaccines are not reported, and we need to multiply these death reports by anywhere from 5 to over 100 to reach a reliable estimate of just how many people have died after receiving a COVID-19 injection. 7. There is a disproportionate number of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular deaths after COVID-19 injections and there are biologically plausible mechanisms linking the injections to the deathsAnalysis of 196 death cases reported after the Pfizer injection in Japan revealed that a disproportionately high number of these deaths were from cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases, including stroke, myocardial infarction (heart attack), venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism and heart failure. For example, of 31 deaths occurring in injected vaccinated medical workers, 84% were cerebro- and cardiovascular diseases, compared to only 22% in the general population. Of the reported death cases in elderly people, 69% were from cerebro- and cardiovascular causes, compared to 26% in the general population. The authors of the analysis point out that post-injection deaths reach a peak on 4 days post injection, which is also the median incubation period of COVID-19. They posit that when injection-induced spike proteins attach themselves to the delicate endothelial cells which line our blood vessels, they are recognised as foreign bodies by the immune system, and are attacked and eliminated. This causes damage to the endothelium, triggering blood coagulation and thrombus (clot) formation which can in turn cause a heart attack or stroke. Serious damage to the endothelium can trigger dissecting aneurysm or rupture of a small aneurysm. 8. Highly experienced pathologists have judged between 30% and 93% of post-injection deaths to have been caused by COVID-19 injections, based on autopsy findingsAfter conducting autopsies on 40 people who died within two weeks of receiving a COVID-19 injection, Peter Schirmacher, chief pathologist at the University of Heidelberg, concluded that 30-40% of them died as a direct result of the injection. Schirmacher, who is injected himself and a proponent of the injections, has publicly stated that the frequency of fatal vaccination consequences is underestimated. He has called for more autopsies of people who die after injection to be conducted in order to clarify the mechanism(s) of harm, which will enable doctors to tailor their advice to their patients based on risk factor profiles. (Dr Schirmacher does not discuss how this individualised advice squares with one-size-fits-all mandates.) Dr Arne Burkhardt , one of the most experienced pathologists in Germany, and retired Thai-German microbiologist Dr Sucharit Bhakdi (read their extensive and impressive bios here) conducted autopsies on 15 people (aged between 28 and 95) who died between 7 days and 6 months after receiving a COVID-19 injection, and concluded that the injection was implicated in the deaths of 14 of the 15 cases. They observed widespread inflammatory events in small blood vessels (endothelitis), and extensive accumulation of T lymphocytes in non-lymphatic organs, indicating that the immune systems of the deceased individuals were attacking their own organs – especially the heart and lungs. Burkhardt and Bhakdi presented their findings at a press conference which can be viewed here, with a concise version presented by Dr Bhakdi here. Back to the Bradford Hill criteriaI think it’s fair to say, after reviewing the evidence laid out above, that there is a strong, consistent, temporal relationship between COVID-19 injections and death, that is biologically plausible and coherent, and borne out by natural experiments (such as the introduction of COVID-19 injections into populations that previously had zero or low COVID-19 deaths). The specificity criterion is now considered to be of limited value; the biologic gradient criterion has limited applicability and the analogy criterion is rendered largely moot by the sheer scale of COVID-19 injection-associated deaths, which dwarf those associated with any other pharmaceutical product. In a sane world, responsible medical authorities would call an immediate halt to the COVID-19 injection program and conduct a forensic (literally) examination of the massive volume of injuries and deaths associated with these novel pharmaceutical products. Instead, we are being ordered to take boosters of the same products that have self-evidently failed to “end the pandemic” and could quite possibly be making it worse. What are we to make of that failure to act in the face of these obvious harms and abject failures? I’m interested in your thoughts; please share them in the Comments section below. https://robynchuter.substack.com/p/if-the-covid-19-injections-work-why-9dd |
AuthorOur articles and rebuttal pieces are written by our writers on our volunteer team Archives
April 2023
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